Celebrating Merle’s Music-

Kern Museum Preserves Haggard’s Memory and his Boxcar Home

The Merle Haggard Boxcar house on the grounds of the Kern County Museum in Bakersfield. Photo: Steve Newvine

Country singer Merle Haggard was born in Kern County in California. He left at an early age first as an inmate in the state prison system, and then on to a music career where he reached new heights.

He wrote songs about his Central Valley experiences and never forgot his Bakersfield Sound roots.

The Kern County Museum acquired Merle’s home, a converted boxcar, and moved it from Oildale north of Bakersfield to their property on Chester Avenue. It was restored to how it looked and functioned as a home when he was growing up.

Museum Executive Director Mike McCoy says the Boxcar home is one of the most asked for attractions among regular visitors and some famous people.  

“We do get special visitors to the museum to see the boxcar like award winning director Ken Burns,” McCoy said.

In the Haggard Boxcar, Burns shot portions of the PBS documentary Country Music (Central Valley is Prominent in Country Music- https://www.mercedcountyevents.com/steve-newvine-1/central-valley-is-prominent-in-country-music

Inside the Haggard Boxcar at the Kern County Museum. On the left is the family kitchen; on the right is the living room. Photos: Steve Newvine

The Boxcar house rests in a village-like setting on the sprawling property the Museum maintains. Visitors can go inside the house and see the original boxcar with added rooms Haggard’s family built to raise their growing family.  

Photographs and narrative help tell the story of what it was like to be poor in the Central Valley in the forties and fifties, and how the people living in homes similar to this one made the best from what they had.

Haggard’s musical legacy is celebrated in the Museum in a permanent exhibit centered on the Bakersfield Sound. That exhibit is housed in a separate building at another end of the Museum property.

Several homes have been moved to the site between the Boxcar and the music exhibits to create a sense of what Kern County was like several decades ago before and during the Dust Bowl era.

Two of the many structures have been moved to the Kern County Museum. On the left is one of the farmworker housing units from the 1930s. On the right is the Howell House, the home of Bakersfield publisher William Howell. Photos: Steve Newvine

At the other end of the spectrum sits the Howell House, the home of the publisher of the Bakersfield daily newspaper, William Howell.  

Other homes represent ethnic groups that were part of the region’s agricultural heritage. Several so-called bungalow homes were affordable structures, and many new residents bought or rented them when they began working in the area.

There is a marker honoring the women of Kern County who were the “Rosie the Riveters” of World War II.

The Museum office is a piece of local history, having served first as the local Chamber of Commerce headquarters.  

All the exhibits bring together a feel for the experience of living in the Central Valley of California.  

One of the stage costumes worn by Merle Haggard inside the Bakersfield Sound permanent exhibit at the Kern County Museum. Photo: Steve Newvine

But at the top of the list of things visitors want to see is the Merle Haggard Boxcar house.

Behind Plexiglas windows, visitors can see the quiet simplicity of life in a smaller space.

They can see how a young boy from these humble beginnings would aspire to leave, falter in his early adult years, and rise to some of the highest ranks in country music.

  He was born in the Valley two years after his parents moved from Oklahoma as part of the Dust Bowl migration in the 1930s. His father remodeled an old railroad boxcar for the family of five in Oildale north of Bakersfield. 

His father died when Merle was eight, leaving his mother to work outside the home, contributing to Merle getting into trouble with authorities. Merle spent time in a juvenile detention center at age thirteen and spent most of his teen years in and out of detention centers until a robbery conviction sent him to San Quentin Prison in 1958.  

But he began turning his life around, and inspired by a Johnny Cash concert at the prison, he dedicated himself to a better life through music.

A marker in front of the Harley Davidson dealership on Merle Haggard Drive in Oildale north of Bakersfield. Photo: Steve Newvine

His songs shared the pain and hopelessness of his bad decisions early in his life. Stardom reached him in the sixties, seventies, and eighties with hit records such as Mamma Tried and Okie from Muskogee.  

He continued to sing and write songs long after his initial commercial successes. He passed in 2016.

 In addition to the boxcar home on the Museum grounds and in the stand-alone Bakersfield Sound exhibit, he is recognized with a stone marker in front of the Harley Davidson dealership on Merle Haggard Drive.

He contributed to the brand of music known as the Bakersfield Sound, which Buck Owens and others made famous. 

From humble beginnings that seemingly pointed in only one negative direction, he rose above it all and always remembered his roots.

And he is not forgotten in Bakersfield.

Steve Newvine lives in Merced.  

The annual Haggard Boxcar Music Festival will be held on April 5 at 4 pm at the Kern County Museum, 3801 Chester Avenue, in Bakersfield.

Ticket information can be found at https://bakersfieldmusichalloffame.com/

Later this year, Steve will have a column on the Bakersfield Sound Exhibit.

His California books are available at the Merced County Courthouse Museum gift shop and Bookish Modesto at the Roseburg Square Shopping Center, 811 W Roseburg Avenue in Modesto.

His latest book Jack & Johnny: Benny, Carson and a Friendship Made for Television, and all his releases, are available there as well or it can be ordered at Jack & Johnny (lulu.com)